An altonative to Maruti 800

Nandini Sen Gupta, TNNOct 5, 2004, 03.14am IST

NEW DELHI: Maruti Udyog Ltd's (MUL) price aggression on the Alto seems to be paying off. In September, for the third time in a row, the Alto pipped MUL's earlier best-seller Maruti 800 as the top-selling product in the company's stable.

And in the first six months of the fiscal, it drove right to the top of the B-segment heap with a cumulative tally of 59,009 units.

The Alto's A-segment positioning has brought it within sniffing distance of the largest-selling passenger car model in the country, the redoubtable M800. In April-September, the M800 clocked 59,871 units, just barely ahead of the Alto. In contrast, last fiscal, the Alto's 20,000-unit tally was one-fourth of the M800's 82,000-unit haul.

The Alto's northward drive has seen some U-turns and speed-breakers this fiscal. Its April tally of 9,350 units was considerably lower than the M800's 15,259 unit sales. In May, it pipped the M800 for the first time with a 10,378-unit haul, ahead of 10,016 units clocked by the latter. In June, which also saw the plant shut down for maintenance for a week, the M800 clawed its way back into the speed zone with 10,761 units while the Alto lagged behind at 8,178 units.

Since then, there's been no looking back for the A- and B-segment straddler. In July, the Alto clocked 11,122 units to the M800's 9,554 units. In August, it sold 10,003 units compared to 8,713 units of the M800. And in September, it clocked 10,008 units compared to the M800's 9,730 units.

Alto's 201% growth in April-September puts it ahead of rival front-runners in the B-segment. But in growth terms, it's still trailing the Baleno's 264% growth in the MUL stable, though the latter's volume base is much smaller.

The Baleno sold 890 units in September and a cumulative 3,635 units in April-September, up from 998 units sold in the year-ago period.